On May 1, 2003, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center was established for a very clear purpose: to centralize the universe of threats aimed at America, analyze them on the spot, every day, and produce an evolving big picture of threats that are instantly actionable.

How does it work? The concept is simple--like a war room you see in old films: Analysts from every agency in the U.S. Intelligence Community receive a steady stream of threat information developed by their agency agents and sources--and they continuously fit those pieces into the ongoing picture...question them...validate them...analyze their implications...demand fresh information from the appropriate agency wherever they see gaps...and produce sequential "fused" snapshots of threats that can be--and are--converted into alerts and actions.

They send daily reports to the President and senior policymakers and share them across agencies responsible for the protection of the country. They make terrorist threat information and finished analyses available 24/7 at TTIC Online to some 2,600 specialists at every major federal agency and department involved in counterterrorism activities.

Where exactly does the threat information come from?From everywhere in the world--because it is aggressively gathered from intelligence, law enforcement, homeland security, diplomatic, and military sources everywhere in the world, then immediately entered into agency information systems and databases and picked up by TTIC analysts. Eyes and ears in Omaha that report to the FBI, say, an embassy bomb plot in Africa can--and do--match with eyes and ears in remote corners of the globe that report the same plot to CIA, diplomatic, and military intelligence officers.

What's the FBI's role in this joint venture? The same as our colleagues there from CIA, the Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security, and Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and other agencies: to provide credible information from the U.S. law enforcement community and from our law enforcement colleagues overseas; to produce focused analysis on specific terrorist issues; and to fuse it with our partners into pure intelligence that will prevent terrorist attacks and protect American people and interests.

On the occasion of TTIC's one-year anniversary, we'd like to quote TTIC Director John Brennan on this crafting of a new national terrorism analysis and information sharing framework, which he correctly calls "a revolutionary concept": "TTIC represents a new way of optimizing the U.S. Government's knowledge and formidable capabilities in the fight against terrorism...that allows us to gain a comprehensive understanding of terrorist threats to U.S. interests at home and abroad and, most importantly, to provide this information and related analysis to those responsible for detecting, disrupting, deterring, and defending against terrorist attacks."